more on S.F. stalling Wi-Fi plans, Google executive charges (why are they surprised djf)

Begin forwarded message:

From: Glenn Fleishman <[email protected]>
Date: September 26, 2006 12:55:47 PM EDT
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [IP] more on S.F. stalling Wi-Fi plans, Google executive  
charges (why are they surprised djf)

Tom Gray <[email protected]> wrote:
> I attended a talk by a vendor of WiFi equipment for
> municipal applications on Friday. He discussed the San
> Francisco issue specifically. According to him, the
> issue was with the backhaul technology planned by
> Google. This would provide a choke point that would
> greatly limit the bandwidth available to individual
> users. Other more expensive back haul technology does
> not suffer from this issue.

Not to dispute what you heard the vendor say, but Google isn't  
driving this; EarthLink is. Google co-bid with SF, but Google and  
EarthLink have said that EarthLink is the builder and operator of the  
network and Google will be a paid client redistributing free access.

EarthLink standardized last year on a Tropos + Motorola platform. The  
Canopy (not exactly pre-WiMax) and WiMax platforms that Motorola is  
using can carry fairly high amounts of bandwidth over the short  
distances that will be used in bringing clusters of Tropos Wi-Fi  
nodes together. There will be a Motorola backhaul node for every  
cluster of Wi-Fi nodes, and that will probably handle 20 Mbps to a  
central point that will aggregate onto fiber or licensed microwave  
backhaul to central POPs.
--
Glenn Fleishman
seattle . washington
unsolicited pundit . glennf.com
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